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Austria, Portugal, and the UK win Imagine Cup 2013, taking down $50,000 each

This evening in St. Petersburg Microsoft announced the winning teams of its Imagine Cup student competition. The winning teams from each of the three main tracks will take home $50,000. The gaming award was won by Team Zeppelin Studio of Austria. The World Citizenship award was won by Team For A Better World from Portugal. And Team Colinked from the United Kingdom won the Innovation award.

Among the teams competing for the top gaming prize, Solite Studio of Indonesia and Bonzai Lightning of France won second and third place, taking home $10,000 and $5,00 each. Second and third place for teams focusing on ‘world citizenship’ are Team Omni-Hearing Solution of Taiwan, and of Team Confufish Royale of Australia. They too will take home $10,000 and $5,000 respectively. Omni-Hearing is an app that hears higher and lower frequencies to help those with damaged hearing.

Finally, silver and bronze for the ‘innovation’ track are Team DORA of Slovenia, and Team MYRA of Thailand. $15,000 will be awarded to them as well. DORA is a tool that allows doctors to use Kinect to use their hands without touching to view medical documents during surgery. This prevents them from needing to take time rescrubbing.

The first place winner of the Windows Phone challenge, Team vSoft Studio of Singapore took down $10,000 for their voice notes app that syncs across the cloud to other platforms.

Winning the Azure challenge, also taking down $10,000 was Y-Nots, who built ‘Zoink It!,’ a social networking app that connects people in the same city with the same interests.

The Windows 8 challenge was won by TeamNameException of Italy, snagging $10,000. That team brought several trophies to its country.

Continuing the theme of women in technology, the Women’s Empowerment Award, in cooperation with Microsoft and the United Nations was won by Team Code 8 from Uganda, and Team Omni-Hearing Solution from Taiwan. First place will take home $12,000, and second place $8,000. Team Code 8 worked on an idea that can detect malaria infection, sans the need for a blood sample.

Finally, by far the most finger-licking of the prize menu was the KFC Russia Award, won by Sano, a Canadian team. They have built a training application to cut down on being too sedentary when working on a computer. It’s a $10,000 check and will see the team’s work featured in KFC’s ‘flagship’ location in Moscow.

Microsoft also announced hat the next Imagine Cup finals will take place in Redmond, Microsoft’s home domain.